About

About Susan

I am an award-winning writer, editor, blogger, and essayist. For more than 15 years, I’ve been working with a wide range of clients to translate their messages and goals into clear, compelling copy.

My work has been featured in national publications including The New York Times, The Globe and Mail, The National Post, Ms. magazine, Today’s Parent and ParentsCanada magazines, the Canadian Bar Association’s National and Canadian Corporate Counsel Association magazines, and on the CBC. My clients include the Canadian Cancer Society, Cancer Care Ontario, the National Judicial Institute, The Canadian Population Health Initiative, Lakehead University, the Canadian Friends of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Institute for Medical Research Israel-Canada, and the Thunder Bay Regional Research Institute, among others. I have written and edited hundreds of articles for these and other clients, and have co-authored two books.

I’ve been writing since I could hold a pencil. My short stories, essays, poetry, blog posts, performance pieces, radio documentaries, and other work have been published or showcased in a variety of venues — have a look at some of my favourite pieces. I am coeditor of the award-winning anthology And Baby Makes More: Known Donors, Queer Parents and Our Unexpected Families (Insomniac Press, 2009). I am currently working on Overflow, a performance piece about lingerie, motherhood and hereditary breast cancer, and I am toying with the idea of resurrecting a long-ago novel manuscript and turning it into a young adult novel.

Since 2012, I’ve been a member of the Thunder Pride executive committee, where I chair the Pride literary evening and initiated the Thunder Pride Youth Literary Competition, giving LGBTQ youth a voice in our community.

I may be a viable answer to the question, “But what do you do with degrees in English and women’s studies?” I graduated with an honours degree in the former (with a minor in women’s studies) from McGill University in Montreal, and have a Masters degree in the latter from York University in Toronto, where I wrote a thesis on “passing” in African-American literature. I attended (and highly recommend) Ryerson University’s publishing program, where I received the Stephen J. Mills Memorial Award. I have since taught creative writing at Lakehead University.

I was born and raised in Toronto, and relocated to Thunder Bay, Ontario, in 2004, where I live with my two sons.

Susan was able to understand complex material and explain technical concepts clearly, concisely and logically.